Neinda Baptist Church
Hamlin vicinity, Jones County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized on July 21, 1889, as the Baptist Church of Christ at Plum Creek, this church began with thirteen charter members. The congregation met in a community building shared by the Methodist Church and the local Masonic Lodge until a Baptist sanctuary was built in 1894. A second building was erected in 1904, and the name was changed to First Baptist Church of Neinda. The Rev. J. S. Hubbard began a twenty-year ministry here in 1916. Throughout its history, this church has been an integral part of the Neinda community. (1990)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in July 1889 as the Baptist Church of Christ at Plum Creek, this West Texas congregation began with just thirteen charter members who first shared a community building with the Methodists and the Masonic Lodge. They raised their own sanctuary in 1894, built a second in 1904, and took the name First Baptist Church of Neinda. A twenty-year pastorate begun in 1916 helped root the church at the center of its farming community.
Why it matters
Small frontier congregations like Neinda Baptist were the social glue of scattered agricultural settlements, providing worship, schooling, and community identity where little other infrastructure existed.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Neinda Community
Hamlin, TX
After Jones County organized in 1881, ranchers settled west of Skinout Mountain and built a community first called Banner, renamed Neinda when its post office opened in 1890. A cemetery followed in 1891, but the town's fate was sealed in 1902 when the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway bypassed it to create nearby Hamlin. Though Neinda peaked in the 1920s with a school, churches, a cotton gin, and stores, little survived into the twenty-first century beyond its cemetery, a 1905 church, and a 1927 store building.
Boyd Chapel Community
Anson, TX
Settlement came to Jones County in the late 1800s, first near the abandoned Fort Phantom Hill and then around ranches and farms, and in 1895 Reese Davis, Joe Swent, and Alex Boyd built the school that gave Boyd Chapel its name. Shaped by landowning families like the Youngs, who deeded ground for churches, a school, and a tabernacle, the cotton-farming community thrived until World War II drew its young people into the armed forces and city jobs. After its school consolidated with Anson in 1947, Boyd Chapel faded, and today only graves in the Neinda Cemetery mark where it stood.
Woods Chapel Cemetery
Roby vicinity, TX
As settlers pushed into this corner of Fisher County in the early 1880s, a single frame building served as both school and church, and by 1884 a graveyard had begun — named for its first pastor, J. B. Woods. Among those resting here is the family of Henry Clay Lyon, a Tennessee-born veteran of the Republic of Texas army; of twenty-six marked graves, thirteen belong to infants and small children.
Site of Hitson Community
Rotan vicinity, TX
Ranchers John and William Hittson were among the first to settle here around 1870, and the community that grew near their homes took their name. A post office, school, store, and church followed, and oil discovered after World War I brought new income. Yet the labor drain of the Second World War left its small family farms unable to survive, and by the century's end only a few homes and a cemetery remained.